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How to create a new project from a project template using the Copier tool

Info

This how-to guide assumes that the Copier tool has been installed as described in the how-to guide for preparing your system.

There are two copier-based boilerplate projects:

Details may vary, please check README.md of those projects. But in general, process of project creation is the following:

  1. Select the boilerplate git tag you want to create your project from. Tags are available in GitLab

  2. Run copier copy command and provide answers.

    copier copy --trust --vcs-ref <TAG> <URL> <OUTPUT_PATH>
    

    Where:

    • is a version of the template (e.g. 2.0.0).
    • is a url of the template project (one of two mentioned on this page).
    • is a path where generated content will be stored. Can be relative or absolute.

    Question

    Why do I need to use the --trust flag?

    Our copier templates include some custom code which is used to pre-populate poetry lock files, etc. The --trust flag is required to allow copier to run this custom code.

    Copier will ask you for a number of input values. Every boilerplate has its own set, please check the docummentation.

  3. Navigate to the <OUTPUT_PATH> directory. This is a newly created project. It contains .copier-answers.yml where all data is store to be used later when this project will be updated with a new version of parent boilerpalate. The only thing left is to init git repository and add newly created project:

    git init .
    git add -A
    git commit -m "Initial commit"
    
  4. Review the result and push to the GitLab.